Midnight Bites

by Rachel Caine

  I wiped my face. The white makeup was almost gone, and my skin was wet; I hadn’t even known I was crying.

  Not a mark on me.

  Sit here, Miranda had told me. Right here. Like she’d known. Like she’d picked me over her own sister.

  I couldn’t stop shaking. Officer Morrell found a blanket in the back of his patrol car and threw it around my shoulders, and then he bundled me in the back and drove me the five miles back home. All the lights were on at my parents’ house, but it didn’t look welcoming. I checked the time on my cell phone.

  Four a.m.

  “Hey,” Richard said. “It’s the big day, right? Time to grow up, Eve. I’m sorry about your friends, but you need to focus now. Make the right choices. You understand?”

  He was trying to be kind, as much as he knew how to be; must have been hard, considering the asshole genes he’d been given. I tried to think what his sister, Monica, would have said in the same situation. What a bunch of trashed-out losers. They shouldn’t be in our cemetery. We’ve got a perfectly good landfill.

  I knew Monica too well, but that wasn’t Richard’s fault. I nodded to him numbly, gave back the blanket, and walked up the ten steps from the curb to my parents’ front door.

  It opened before I reached for the knob, and I was facing Brandon, the family’s vampire Protector.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Eve,” he said, and stepped back. “Come in.”

  I swallowed whatever smart-ass remark I might normally have given him, and looked back over my shoulder. Richard Morrell was looking through the window of the police cruiser at me, and he gave a friendly wave and drove off. Like I was in good hands.

  You know every stereotype of the romantic, brooding vampire? Well, that’s Brandon. Dark, broody, bedroom eyes, wore a lot of black leather. Liked to think he was badass, and what the hell did I know? Maybe he was.

  I hated his guts, and he knew it.

  “Honey?” Mom. She was hovering behind Brandon, looking timid and nervous. “Better come inside. You know you shouldn’t be out there in the dark.”

  Dad was nowhere to be seen. I bit my tongue and crossed the threshold, and when Brandon closed the door behind me, it was like the cell slamming shut.

  “I was in an accident,” I said. Mom looked at me. We didn’t look much alike, even when I wasn’t Gothed up. . . . She had fading brown hair and green eyes, and I took after Dad’s darker looks. I sometimes thought maybe this was some kind of play, and Mom was an actress, and not a very good one, playing the role of my mother. She phoned in her performance.

  “Officer Morrell called,” she said. “But he said you weren’t hurt. And you know, we had a guest.” She smiled at Brandon. My skin tried to crawl off my bones.

  “Three of my friends were killed,” I said.

  “Oh dear!”

  “Once more with feeling, Mom.”

  “Any of mine?” Brandon asked casually. I gritted my teeth, because I wanted to scream and hit him, and that wouldn’t have done me any good at all.

  “N-no,” I managed to stammer. “Jane Blunt, Trent Garvey, and Guy—” What the hell was Guy’s last name? I wanted to cry now. Or keep crying. “Guy Finelli.”

  Brandon smiled. “Sounds as if Charles had a bad night.” Charles being a rival vamp. I knew he was the Protector for Jane’s family. I hadn’t known he’d been responsible for one or both of the others. Charles was just the opposite of Brandon—a bookish little man, soft-spoken and mild until you pushed him. Not a bad choice, if I had to go shopping for Protectors, I supposed.

  God, I hated this. I wanted this over.

  “Let’s just do it,” I said, and walked down the hallway to the living room. Predictably, Dad was parked in his recliner with an open beer, probably working on his usual six-pack. He was a bloated vision of my future—two hundred and fifty pounds, sallow and grim and full of rage and resentment he couldn’t fling anywhere but around here, in the house. He managed the biggest local bar, which of course was owned by Brandon. All nice and tidy. Brandon owned the mortgage on the house. Brandon owned the notes on our cars.

  Brandon owned us.

  And now Brandon was smiling at me, all sleek and horrible with those hungry, hungry eyes, and he was taking a folded, thick sheaf of papers out of the pocket of his long black coat.

  “You only wear that thing because you saw it on TV,” I said, and snatched the paperwork from him. I read the first bit. I, Eve Evangeline Walker Rosser, swear my life, my blood, and my service to my Protector Brandon, now and for my lifetime, that my Protector may command me in all things.

  This was it. I was holding my future in my hands, right here.

  Brandon held out a pen. My father tore his attention away from the glowing escape of the television and took a sip of beer, watching me with dead, angry intensity. My mother looked nervous, fluttering her hands as I stared without blinking at the black Montblanc the vampire was holding out.

  “Happy birthday, by the way,” Brandon said. “There’s a signing bonus. Ten thousand dollars.”

  “Guess I could bury my friends in style with that,” I said.

  “You don’t have to worry about that.” Brandon shrugged. “Their family contracts cover that sort of thing.”

  Mom sensed what I was thinking, I guess, because she blurted, “Eve, honey, let’s hurry. Brandon does have places to go.” She encouraged me with little vague motions of her hands, and her eyes were desperate.

  I took a deep breath, held the crisp paper in both hands, and ripped it in half. The sound was almost drowned out by my mother’s horrified gasp, and the sound of the beer can crushing in my father’s hand.

  “You ungrateful little freak,” Dad said. “You disrespect your Protector like that? To his face?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Pretty much just like that.” I ripped the contract in quarters, and threw it at him. The paper fluttered like huge confetti, one piece landing on his shoulder until Brandon calmly brushed it off. “Fuck off, Brandon. I’m not signing with you.”

  “No one else will take you,” he said. “And you’re mine, Eve. You’ve always been mine. Don’t forget it.”

  My Dad got out of his recliner and grabbed my arm. “You’re signing that paper,” he said, and shook me like a terrier shaking a rat. “Don’t be stupid!”

  “I’m not signing anything!” I screamed, right in his face, and took Brandon’s expensive pen and stomped on it with my Mary Janes until it was a leaking black stain on the floor. “You can be slaves if you want, but not me! Not ever again!”

  Brandon didn’t look angry. He looked amused. That was bad.

  Dad shoved me and sent me reeling. “Then you’re gone,” he said. “I won’t have you in my house, eating my food, stealing my money. If you want to go out there bare, then do it. See how long you last.”

  I was stunned, at least a little; he’d never done that before, even though he’d never really loved me. I backed away from him, into Mom. She got out of the way, but then, she always did, didn’t she? She had all the backbone of a balloon.

  She avoided my eyes completely. “You’d better go, honey,” she said. “You made your choice.”

  I turned and ran down the hall to my room, slammed the door, and dragged my biggest suitcase out from under the bed. I couldn’t take much, I knew that; even taking a suitcase was risky, because it slowed me down. But I couldn’t wait for dawn; I had to get out of here now, before Brandon stopped me. He wasn’t supposed to use compulsion on me, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t.

  Or that my parents wouldn’t. For my own good, of course.

  I filled up the bag with underwear, shoes, clothes, a few mementos that I couldn’t leave, just in case Dad decided to load the barbecue grill with my belongings the minute I was out the door. I left the family photos. Mom and Dad weren’t fond memories, and neither was my brother, Jason, who wa
s better off in jail, where he was currently rotting.

  I went out the back door, since Brandon was still talking to Mom and Dad in the front, and dragged the suitcase as quietly as possible across the backyard to the alley. Alleys in Morganville are freaky at night, and wildly dangerous, but I didn’t have much choice. I hurried, bouncing my suitcase over rough, rutted ground and past foul-smelling trash bins, until I was on the street.

  And I realized I had no idea where to go. No idea at all. All the friends I’d had were dead—dead tonight—and I couldn’t even really grieve about that; I didn’t have time. Lifesaving had to come first, right? That was what I kept telling myself.

  Didn’t help me carry that giant boulder of guilt on my back.

  Cabs didn’t run at night, because cabbies knew better, and besides, there were only two in the whole town. No bus service. At night, either you drove or you stayed home, and even driving was dangerous if you were un-Protected.

  I could go to the local motel for the night, the Sagebrush, but it was a good twenty-minute walk, and I didn’t think I had twenty minutes. Not tonight. I’d officially forfeited Brandon’s Protection when I’d ripped up that paper, and that meant I was an all-you-can-suck buffet until I got somebody to take me in. Houses had automatic Protection. Any house.

  Michael.

  I don’t know why I thought of Michael Glass, but all of a sudden I had a flashback to the last time I’d seen him, playing guitar in Common Grounds, the local hot-spot coffee shop. I’d gone to high school with Michael, crushed hard on Michael from a distance, and semi-stalked him after he graduated, attending every single gig he’d landed in Morganville. He was good, you see. And a sweetheart. And little baby Jesus, he was hot. And he had his own house.

  I knew the Glass House. It was one of the historic homes of Morganville, all gently decaying Gothic elegance, and Michael’s parents had moved out on waivers two years ago. Michael lived there all alone, as far as I knew.

  And it was only three blocks away.

  I had no idea if he was home, or if he’d be stupid enough to let me in when I was running for my life, but it was worth a try, right? I broke into a jog, the wheels of my suitcase making a whirring, grating hiss on the sidewalk. The night felt deep and dark, no moon, only starlight, and it smelled like cold dust. Like a graveyard. Like my graveyard.

  I thought of Trent, Guy, and Jane, in their silent black bags. Maybe they were in cold metal drawers by now, filed away. Lives over.

  I didn’t want to be dead. I didn’t.

  So I ran, bumping my suitcase behind me.

  I didn’t see a soul on the streets. No cars, no lights in windows, no shadows trailing me. It was eerily quiet outside, and my heart was racing. I wished I had weapons, but those were hard to come by in Morganville, and besides, I had nosy parents who trashed my room regularly looking for contraband of all kinds. Being under eighteen sucked.

  Being over eighteen wasn’t looking so great, either.

  I heard the hiss of tires behind me, over the puffing of my breath, and the low growl of a car engine. I looked back, hoping to see Richard Morrell following me in the police car, but no such luck; it was a nondescript black sports car with dark-tinted windows.

  Vampire car. No question.

  Two more blocks.

  The car seemed content to creep along behind me, tires crunching over pavement, and I had plenty of panic time to wonder who was inside. Brandon, in the back, almost certainly. But Brandon wouldn’t be the one to fang me, although he’d probably take his turn before I was dead. He had people to do that for him.

  The suitcase hit a crack in the sidewalk and tipped over, dragging me to an off-balance halt. I saw a light go on in one of the houses I was passing, and a curtain twitch aside, and then the blinds snapped shut and the lights flicked off. No help there. But then, in Morganville, that wasn’t unusual.

  I wasn’t crying, but it was close; I could feel tears burning in my throat, right above the terror twisting my guts. This was your choice, I told myself. You couldn’t do anything else.

  Right now, that wasn’t much comfort.

  Up ahead, I saw the looming bulk of the Glass House—one more block to go. I could make it, I could. I had to. Jane and Trent and Guy were gone. I owed it to them to live through this.

  The car sped up behind me as I crossed the street to the next corner. Four houses to go, all still and lightless.

  There was a porch light on in front of 716, and it cast a glow on the pillars framing the porch, picked out the boards in the white fence in front. There were lights on inside, and I saw someone pass in front of a window.

  “Michael!” I screamed it, and put everything into one last sprint. The car eased ahead of me and pulled in at the curb with a squeal of brakes, tires bumping concrete. A door flew open to block the sidewalk, and I gasped, picked up my suitcase, and tossed it over the fence. It weighed about fifty pounds, but I managed to toss it anyway. I grabbed the rough whitewashed boards with their sharp tops and vaulted over, got my shirt caught on the way and ripped it open. No time to worry about that. I dragged my suitcase over the night-damp grass and yelled his name again, with even more of an edge of panic. “Michael! It’s Eve! Open the door!”

  They were behind me. They were right behind me. I knew it, even though I didn’t dare look back and they made no sound. I could feel it. I felt something grab the suitcase, nearly twisting my arm out of the socket, and I let go, stumbling against the porch stairs. The house stretched above me, gray and ghostly in the dark, but that porch light, that was life.

  Something caught my foot. I screamed and kicked, fighting to get free. My searching fingers scratched at the closed wood of the door, and I tasted dust again. I’d been close, so close. . . .

  The door opened, and warm yellow light spilled out over me. Too late. I tried to grab for a handhold, but I was being yanked backward . . . and I could feel breath on the back of my neck. Cold, rancid breath.

  Something flew over my head and slammed into the vampire pulling on me, knocking him flying. I crawled back toward the door and got a hand over the threshold.

  Michael Glass grabbed my hand and dragged me inside with one long pull. My feet made it over the line just a fraction of a second before another vampire slammed into the invisible barrier there.

  Brandon. Oh, damn, he was angry. Really angry. Vampires usually didn’t look like movie vamps—they were all about the fitting in—but right now he clearly didn’t care. His eyes had turned bloodred, and his face was whiter than I’d ever made mine. And I could see fangs, fangs a viper would have envied, flicking down from their hiding place to flash in menace.

  Michael Glass didn’t flinch. He looked pretty much as I remembered him, only . . . better, somehow. Stronger. Tall, built, golden hair that waved and curled surfer-style. He had blue eyes, and they were fixed on Brandon. Not afraid, but wary.

  “You okay?” he asked me. I nodded, unable to say anything that would really cover how I felt. “Then get out of the way.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your legs.”

  I pulled them in, and he calmly shut the door in Brandon’s face. I sat there on the wooden floor, knees pulled in to my chest, and tried to slow my heart down from triple digits. “God,” I whispered, and rested my forehead on my knees. “That was close.”

  I heard the rustle of fabric. Michael had crouched down across from me, back to the opposite wall. He was wearing some comfortable old jeans, a faded green cotton shirt, and his feet were long and narrow and bare. “Eve?” he asked. “What the hell was that?”

  “Um . . . my eighteenth-birthday present.” I was shivering, and I realized my skull shirt was displaying a whole lot more bra than I’d ever intended. Kind of a plunge bra. Victoria’s Secret. Not so much of a secret right now. “Brandon’s pissed.”

  Michael rested his head against the wall and looked at me wit
h narrowed eyes. “You didn’t sign.”

  I shook my head, unable to say much about that.

  “You can stay until dawn, but you need to go then. You got someplace to go?”

  I just looked at him miserably, and I felt tears starting to bubble up again. What had I been hoping for? Some white knight hottie to save me? Well, I wasn’t going to get it from Michael. He hadn’t even come outside to get me; he’d just thrown a chair or something.

  Still, he’d opened the door. Nobody else on this street had, or would have.

  “Okay,” Michael said softly. He stretched out a hand and awkwardly patted me on the knee. “Hey. You’re okay, right? You’re safe in here. Don’t cry.”

  I didn’t want to cry, but that was how I vented, and boy, did I need to vent. All the fury and grief and rage and confusion just boiled up inside, and forced their way out. I was shaking, sobbing like a punk, and after a couple of shaking breaths I felt Michael move across to sit next to me. His arm went around me, and I turned toward his warmth, soaking his shirt with tears. I would have told him everything then, all the bad stuff . . . the van, my friends, Brandon. I would have told him how Brandon gave my dad a pay raise when I was fifteen in return for unrestricted access to me and Jason. I would have told him everything.

  Lucky for him I couldn’t get my breath.

  Michael was good at soothing; he knew not to talk, and he knew just how to touch my hair and how to hold me. It wasn’t until the storm became more like occasional showers, and I was able to hiccup steady breaths, that I realized he had a clear view down my bra.

  “Hey!” I said, and tried to artfully tuck the torn edges of my shirt under the strap. Michael had an odd look on his face. “Free show’s over, Glass.”

  Trent would have snapped back some snazzy insult, but not Michael. Michael just looked uncomfortable, and edged away from me. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t—”

  Well, if he wasn’t, I was offended. I gave good bra: 34B.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  Michael held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, yeah. I was. That makes me an asshole, right?”